1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to correcting broken links between files stored on a Computer Data Storage.
2. Description of Related Art
Many software applications such as Internet based software, Microsoft® Word™, Microsoft® Excel™, Pagemaker®, AutoCAD®, MicroStation®, QuarkXPress®, and others include the ability to link files to each other. For example, a .gif graphical image file may be linked to an HTML file, an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document, and so forth. However, when a file is renamed or moved from its original location, links to that file may be inadvertently broken. For example, after one .gif file is renamed or moved, software applications that utilize this file may all complain that this file is missing.
More and more documents are being composed modularly with many linked components, making document interconnectivity, breaks and necessity for repair thereof increasingly prevalent and important.
Presently, when software applications encounter a broken link, they ordinarily do nothing more than display an error message. Some software applications provide crude tools to help the user locate missing files, but such tools are typically not automated, requiring user intervention or confirmation, and can only handle one file type. Further, existing tools are not always accurate and are tedious, if helpful at all, when multiple broken links must be restored in multiple documents. Presently, no solution exists for automatically re-connecting broken links among varying types of files.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to overcome the above problems and others by providing a reliable, automatic method of restoring broken links between files created in a variety of applications. Still other objects of the invention will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading and understanding the following detailed description.